Sullivan Principles: Corporations Must Contribute to the Culture of Peace and Help End Gun Violence

WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 21: A demonstrator from CodePink holds up a banner as National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre delivers remarks during a news conference at the Willard Hotel December 21, 2012 in Washington, DC. This is the first public appearance that leaders of the gun rights group have made since a 20-year-old man used a popular assault-style rifle to slaughter 20 school children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, one week ago. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

It’s Christmas night and all is silent. The nation’s collective heart is broken, agonizing over the mass murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. But this country will regroup and the investment and corporate communities will lead the way.

The journey is one that has already been established by the Global Sullivan Principles, which spurred international businesses to disinvest from South Africa’s apartheid government. Before that regime officially fell in 1994, 125 multi-national corporations that include energy firms had signed on and promised to completely withdraw their financial stakes. At its core, the principles ask companies to improve the lives of citizens everywhere in the world where they operate.

“The people around me -- my mother and grandmother -- were my inspiration,” the Rev. Leon Sullivan, who led the economic cause to end apartheid, told this writer before he died in 2001. “They were poor, but honest. I learned from them I had to stand up for things unjust.”

The same economic potion can work to destroy the grip that gun violence is having on American culture. If six brave women can give their lives protecting their school children, global investors and corporations can ban together and disinvest from Ruger, Smith & Wesson and Forjas Taurus. U.S. lawmakers and state legislators can also contribute, realizing that sucking up to their powerful political lobby is abhorrent to most Americans, who now feel as if they are all targets.

Sullivan’s path is a universal example. The two women in his life taught him that his meager beginnings should not weigh him down. He grew up in Charleston, WV off a dirty alley, belittled by some for being black. But he was undaunted, imbued with love and honor -- the same virtues that inspired those six beautiful women to give their lives so that the fortunes of some children could endure.

Sullivan dedicated himself to God, and social justice. The minister would make his mark on history in the early ‘sixties, when from the pulpit of his church he persuaded not only his flock but almost an entire city to boycott companies in Philadelphia that would not hire blacks, using the mantra, “Don’t buy where you don’t work.” In 1963, that effort landed Sullivan on the pages of Life magazine, which had named him one of the country’s 100 leading citizens and described him as an invigorating presence.

The world would then become his stage. In 1971, General Motors invited him to join its board. His mission there was not just to boost stakeholder profits but to also enhance living standards and civil rights for black South Africans. Companies are indeed obligated to the communities where they are serving and ignoring inequities is unacceptable, he said.

Sullivan’s quiet crusade to end apartheid was not the stuff of television news. But his efforts were rippling into the mainstream and causing public opinion to mount against the South African regime. College students were demanding that their schools sell holdings of all companies with interests in the African nation. Liberal columnists were urging a pullout of American companies doing business there, saying that they were sponsoring the divide between the haves and have-nots by filling the coffers of the rich.

GM eventually came around. When it said that it would disinvest unless the South African government loosened its grip over the black majority, other corporations doing business there such Exxon and Mobil followed suit. Because money and jobs were the nation's lifeblood, apartheid was doomed.

“Governments can’t do it all,” Sullivan said during his talk with this reporter. “Corporations must contribute to the culture of peace.” His efforts earned him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992 -- the highest honor that can be bestowed on an American civilian.

A corollary exists between the Sullivan Principles and today’s gun violence that is not just taking place on America’s streets but also in its malls, movie theaters and schools. Gun makers and their lobbyists are determined to sell more weapons and to raise their profits, all while ordinary citizens fear for their children.

When the California teacher's pension fund, Calstrs, threatened to extract $750 million from Cerberus Capital, it dumped its holdings in the Freedom Group. That's the company responsible for making the assault rifles used to kill 20 kindergartners and first graders, as well as six of their teachers. Pension funds from around the country have also responded, with those in New York City considering the withdrawal of multi-millions from all gun makers. The Vanguard Group, though, refuses to rethink its positions that include being the number two investor in Smith & Wesson.

If progressive shareholder activism is replicated throughout the investment and corporate communities, it would bring the National Rifle Association to its knees. To date, those hired hands have held policymakers at gun point. But they can’t intimidate investors. The armed lobbyists will assuredly surrender once their funding dries up.

It’s a strategy focused on the flexing of financial muscle, or one that follows the guidance of Leon Sullivan and the Global Sullivan Principles -- a cause endorsed by the world’s leading companies. It’s an understanding founded on the belief that corporate citizenry is as important as shareholder gains. In the case of the Sandy Hook disaster, it’s a conviction that the people’s safety is more important than the profits of gun makers and their despicable accomplices, the NRA leadership.